English Translation

The force which drives the individual forward in such moments is not born of obedience, nor of the consciousness of duty, but of an inner necessity, whose ultimate reasons are hidden, from which nevertheless there is no escape. At that precious moment the elementary force of war was revealed. This picture, as measured by the enormous sight of the battles of earlier centuries, seems irrelevant - it seemed to me to be an archetype of battle, because only rarely does an event appear visible in modern war. In general, the event takes place in secret, and the eye sees only tiny sections, which must be regarded as a symbol of the overall sequence of things. That evening, the elementary force of war came into my mind most urgently. I experienced it again in the warlike battles of the next weeks, until the enemy's bullet abruptly ripped me out of the warring event. From this experience results the soldiery attitude that I would like to call the banishment of the front. He who ever felt the hot breath of battles and got to taste the immeasurable happiness of the victor, has fallen to the front, he may want or not. With magical force it draws him again and again into that spell circle of death, because life is weighed on the sword edge. He needs that ultimate test which reveals the power of the human heart, for every victory of weapons is preceded by a victory of the hearts. Whoever has not even gone through the raging of battles has lived his existence only half. "War is the father of all things. "The content of this word has become a certainty to me only in the face of the enemy. All truly great things can only be born under blood and pain. Death has the greatest creative power of this earth, it gives the goals of the living the right consecration. Under the shadow of death, life receives its highest holiness. Human existence remains empty and meaningless unless it is constantly and perceptibly threatened. Only a life under danger is worth living. This basic idea runs like a constant melody through the senses and pursuits of our people. War gives us the gift of understanding the peculiar relationships of our ancestors to die. The Germanic people — and we may well consider ourselves their heirs — have always had a special relationship with death. The Roman legionaries were as stunned as the French Poilu. The elementary power of the "Furor teutonicus", which reaches down to the deepest roots of our being, has always only been felt by foreign nations with shiverings. This type of readiness for death is completely different from the self-destruction urge of our Bolshevik opponents. By willingness to die I understand the conscious will, if necessary, to sacrifice personal existence for the preservation of the life force of a higher unity. Life and death are interdependent phenomena here. "And if you do not use life, life will never be won over to you." Bolshevism is the destructive principle par excellence, the denial of all values that make a higher existence possible, it is hatred against every kind of real 2